Translating the testimony of Loc, who was two years younger than Mao, an interpreter informed the court, She said they come in, use flashlight and shone around the house and saw her mothers face and her sisters face and all of them wake up at the same time. As a result, Eriksson left Colorado for Fort Leavenworth, where Manuel, serving his time in the Disciplinary Barracks, was to be retried. To Eriksson, Meserves was the most surprising of the verdicts, for the Sergeant was found innocent of the charge of rape but guilty of unpremeditated murder, for which he was sentenced to a term of ten years. The four courts-martial took place in the winter of 1967, within a period of about ten days in the middle of March. He is now on duty as a soldier in the United States while awaiting further word on his case, which since September has been in the hands of a board of review. It was to take them, ultimately, to Hill 192a height, in the Bong Son valley, that overlooked a ravine laced with a cave complex, which was suspected of serving as a Vietcong hideout. His manner became momentarily subdued when Meserve waved him in as the third man, but Clark was his jaunty self again when he returned. Small artillery spotter planes had arrived, heralding the imminent use of ground-artillery support. 7 years ago. Events happened fast that day, Eriksson said. It was to take them, ultimately, to Hill 192a height, in the Bong Son valley, that overlooked a ravine laced with a cave complex, which was suspected of serving as a Vietcong hideout. At first, we all denied any knowledge about it. By then, too, the men were approaching the hamlet of Cat Tuong, in the district of Phu My, and Eriksson was cursing himself for having listened to Rowan. Thus, early in his tour of duty, Eriksson recalled, G.I.s in his unit were empowered to shoot any Vietnamese violating a 7 P.M. curfew, but in practice it was largely a matter of individual discretion whether a soldier chose to fire at a stray Vietnamese hurrying home a few minutes late to his hootchthe American term for the mud-and-bamboo huts in which most natives lived. The Sergeant seemed more attracted by the possibility of military action, to judge by the speed with which he had his charges break camp. Among them, Eriksson said, these sizable elements, advancing toward the cave complex, succeeded in killing one V.C. Similarly, it was permissible to shoot at any Vietnamese seen running, but, as Eriksson put it, the line between walking and running could be very thin. The day after the one on which his squad was ambushed and half its members were wounded, several enemy prisoners were taken, and, in retaliation, two were summarily killed, to serve as an example. A corporal who was still enraged over the ambush tried to strangle another of the prisoners; he had knotted a poncho, nooselike, around the captives neck and was tightening it when a merciful lieutenant commanded him to desist. . These varying decisions, it seemed, were attributable to a variety of factors, among them considerations of the defendants character and background. Based on the actual events of an incident on Hill 192 in November, 1966. It was impossible for me to have any part of what I knew was about to take place. He suspects that Meserve sensed this, for before anything else happened the Sergeant confronted him, demanding to know whether he would enter the hootch when his turn came. We were each acting the way we had to, he told me. 1989 Topics Trailer, Movie, Drama During the Vietnam War, a soldier finds himself the outsider of his own squad when they unnecessarily kidnap a female villager. Despite Vorsts generally negative tone, Eriksson said, he believed that the company commander would eventually take steps to bring Meserve and the others to justice. Just as the prosecutor had foreseen, the defense attorneys did try to make Eriksson look odd, but that was among the milder of their insinuations. incident on hill 192 where are they now - jbgetfit.com Much as he loved it, he told me, it was what he had been working at before he was drafted, and, as is often true of new war veterans, he felt restless and in need of a change. may have rescued him from Meserve. Eriksson was determined to meet the Arizonans friend, he told me, for he had a feeling that the long-nosed chaplain was the man who would help him bring Maos case to light. When he opened his eyes, a new passenger was sitting directly opposite hima young Oriental woman. Each day, Eriksson said, he felt as though he were at war with war, a troublemaker out to undermine some careful, desperate code of survival. Q: How did you react to this particular ambush, Eriksson? he could control his aggressions in the future, like a professional prizefighter. In Clarks case, the commanding general, who was responsible for deciding whether the evidence supported Clarks conviction and whether Clarks sentence should be lowered, was informed by a staff lawyer who had interviewed Clark that the soldier in the Disciplinary Barracks was articulate and above average in intelligence, and that, if given a chance to renter society, he hoped to earn a college degree in either English or philosophy. I couldnt even guess at the answersnot without knowing what kind of jam Manuel thought he was in.. On the way, Greenacre told Eriksson that the chaplain, Captain Gerald Kirk, came from Ogden, Utah; he was a Mormon, Eriksson learned, and so was Greenacre. Rafe subsequently testified that the Sergeant was in an expansive mood, cheerfully observing to his men that it wasnt every day he could rate artillery support and have himself a woman as well. I was afraid of being ridiculed, sir, he told the prosecutor. Recurrently, the court records show, witnesses found it deplorable that the defendants should have to fight for their survival in a prisoners dock when they might be far better employed doing that on the battlefield; in their every utterance these witnesses reflected the view that losing soldiers of Meserves calibre could result only in gaining a stronger enemy. Subjects This sentence was first commuted to 20 years, then reduced to eight, which made him eligible for parole after half that time. That this weak, coughing girl had overpowered me? It was Manuel, Eriksson told me. Eriksson expects that such steps as he has taken will be succeeded in time by others, though he has no idea at the moment what these may be. The hamlet was barely out of sight when Manuel, perhaps competing with Clark, untied Maos hands, then slipped his pack from his shoulders and loaded it onto the girls. It was her first food since shed been taken away from her hamletit had been still dark then, and here it was the middle of the afternoon. Eriksson did not have sexual intercourse or harm her in any way.) Meserve and Clark denied any wrongdoing, and the leader of the misbegotten patrol insisted that his motives had been misconstrued. Incident on Hill 192 | Imperial War Museums Technically, I myself was a suspect, Eriksson told me. Just seeing an Asian country, for instance, was an adventure, Eriksson says, its landscape so different from the frozen plains of his corner of Minnesota; he had never before splashed through paddy fields, he told me, or stood blinking in the sudden sunlessness of lush, entangled jungle, or wandered uncertainly through imprisoning fields of towering elephant grass. His target turned out to be the rump of a wallowing water buffalo, the animal raising itself from the shallow stream in clumsy panic and lumbering out of view. an exit. Besides, what if the four were court-martialled and found guilty? He had thought of them uneasily, imagining that the act of testifying might force him to relive the macabre episode on Hill 192. In the Army, he had discovered, that kind of action depended entirely on the discretion of ones superiorunless it was possible to figure out some way of bypassing him. The prosecutor, it appeared, counted it a safe bet that the defense attorneys would attempt to portray Eriksson as some kind of repressed nut for having failed to join in the festivities on Hill 192. Incident on Hill 192 by Daniel Lang - Goodreads It was based on an actual incident known as "the incident on Hill 192" which occurred in 1966. Rafes case, I learned, had taken a fresh turn in recent weeks. In the late spring, for instance, he learned that a change of sentence might be in the making for Clark, whose lawyer, it appeared, had asked the jurors who convicted him to approve a petition urging clemency; all but two of them had agreed, and Eriksson was given to understand that this augured an almost certain reduction in sentence. Im talking about a murder. Clark came back to where we were. That guy, hes scared of doing this, hes scared of doing that. Everybody is going to make fun of you. He learned it, eventually, when the girls sister identified her at court-martial proceedingsproceedings that Eriksson himself instigated and in which he served as the governments chief witness. Only minor infractions came his way, but even such a routine chore as driving the drunk wagon down to Sin City could make him conscious of the sense of justice in himself that had been so tumultuously aroused the preceding November.